From: "Roan Carratu"
Subject: Geonet explaination
Date: Thursday, June 15, 2000 6:14 PM

(This is a message sent to someone else to explain the geodemocracy in other terms. I'm not listing their message because I did not get their permission.)

Each member of the geonet is part of two teams of twelve, linked through cyberspace. These are called I-teams, for icosahedronal teams. Each two members in each Team links the same two Teams for built in redundancy. If you need a visual aid, do a search for silicon crystal atoms magnified 24,000,000x. The basic design is the same.

Each I-team of 12 meet in cyberspace in two ways, and in person one way. The cyberspace meetings are called 'Live' meetings and 'Ongoing' meetings. The personal meeting is called a 'face' meeting. Ongoing meetings occur in any part of a day and are much like more involved elists. They occur four out of the five work days of a week. Live meetings are very formal meetings which occur one day each week, at a set time, where all the members in a team, hopefully, will attend with full audio/visual/cyberlink. While the Ongoing meetings are for self- and team education, the Live meetings are for decision making. The Face meetings have no business but getting to know one another in a location everyone in the team mutually chooses. They occur about one per month per Team.

Each two week period is called a single Cycle. A Cycle has a Self-education week and a Decision week. They are what they are described.

While the structure of the organization is fixed, rigid, the subjects, tasks, etc, of the organization is not. Any member can propose any Subject for the meeting to discuss, at the beginning of each Self-education week. This is combined with Subjects coming in from other Teams, and the Team chooses which they want to deal with.

Money, both donated by the members as a percentage of their income, and/or distributed into their control by Financial Projects, is theirs to individually decide what they want to spend it on. Each has one account per Team, and since they are each part of two Teams, they have two accounts. They have to use it for the purposes of the Geonet charter, which will define the direction that the organization can spend the money. The Charter will be defined by the Geonet as a whole, using this same process of meetings and decisions.

This is not a 'majority rule' organization, nor is it 'minority rule'. Those who wish to spend the money on a Project can do so, and those who wish not to spend it, or spend it on some other Project can do that. ...even in the same Team. There are several exceptions to the voting process which are 'majority' rule, but they are specifically designed in as part of the rigid structure and are not based upon coercion or used arbitrarily.

For coordination purposes, there are four rotating positions: Peacekeeper, Timer, Recorder, and Interface. Each member will have each of these positions at least once a year, for two Cycles in each position. While some may be better coordinators than others, each will hopefully learn to handle each position to the best of their ability. While there will always be a bell curve of distribution over the members of the Geonet, those who have trouble or don't wish to truly participate will still learn to handle the jobs, since there is no way to get out of them and remain a member of the Geonet.

Violence and threat by someone towards someone else is the only way someone can be 'thrown' out of the Geonet, and even then, they can get back in easily enough upon the decision of six Teams to let them back in.

The purpose of the Geonet is to create a non-coercive and educated structure of people who can decide together to set up 'Projects'. Projects are hierarchical work structures which are always temporary and which have at their top position a single individual, like a captain of a ship. A project has some specific goal, like fixing a road, or planting trees, or in some way helping out the world. Projects can work to create hardware or software, build devices that are needed, get food to hungry people, whatever, as long as it goes for the purposes defined in the Geonet Charter and every person in the Project is part of the Geonet. It has to be funded by the Geonet members, and no body else. Any money a Project makes, which is a legitimate purpose for a Project, will have to be distributed through the entire Geonet, equally, to be controlled by each member.

This prevents the concentration of either delegated power or money in the hands of a few without direct and ongoing choice by the members, and provides a checks and balances system which will prevent any individual or small group from wielding power beyond their individual sovereignty.

The geonet will grow through the natural process of fission, like a cell grows and divides. Once a year, the geonet will be run through a randomizing program based upon location. While the people in an area may remain in that area, they will be linked through different Teams than before which will allow fresh ideas, interactions, etc to flourish, while taking away what are technically called 'ego-agreements'. Cliques, influence of shier individuals by brash individuals, etc will automatically diminish in the new Teams, or at least have to re-establish and face new individuals who may not be as pliable.

The geonet, being made up of identical Teams, with each member part of two Teams, can create any sized geodesic structure required to generate and educate for any sized problem encountered. The smallest operating resolution, (as in graphics or screen resolutions) is the OctaTeam, made up of six I-Teams. Next is the I-Group, of 12 O-Teams, then O-Group, of 6 I-Groups... etc... alternating Icosa and Octa orientations. Some members will link Teams widely spaced apart, and provide integrated data flow between various resolutions. I haven't even named them much beyond that size. I am sure the members will come up with names for larger resolutions. It is important to note that there is no central coordinating structure in the geonet at all, although temporary Projects will be set up for various functions required by the organization as a whole as needed.

If there was a hurricane somewhere, then the number of members needed to fix up the people suffering the damage might be hundreds of thousands, and the Geonet size and the Project generated taking that on would be that large. If someone sees the need to clean up a dangerous empty lot somewhere, then perhaps only a couple of teams would take that on. They would create a Project, and the members who wish to work in that project would do the work, and all other organizations and governments, etc, would have nothing to do with it. All Projects are inherently temporary.

The two greatest advantages of the Geonet is that it is incorruptible both from within or without. It simply doesn't have the corruptibility that all the existing systems have built in. It's geometry prevents anyone, or any group, from controlling the Geonet or any small part of it beyond the Team level. The other advantage is that it is in complete harmony with the Human Social Instinct, which does well when interacting with a small number of people, two groups of 11 in this case, but which becomes a means of control of the individual when it is applied on larger scales, like mobs, 'political' parties, businesses, churches, etc.

The geonet is a form of organization which amplifies the individuals Sovereignty, while helping him or her retain their sense of self while interacting with larger groups. There is a bit more to it than this, mostly in the way Subjects are passed around within the Team and between Teams. It is all up on my onsite pages.

Comments are requested and appreciated. I'm always looking for other points of view that are beyond pure cursing. grin. All new inventions are compared to past inventions, and classified such by the dim of mind. I have been called every 'ist' in history at one time or another, simply because people tend to pigeonhole a sentence or two and jump into judgment, like a dog chasing a butterfly into a tar pit. Doesn't bother me much usually. I would be happy to answer any questions or address comments. Let's call it 'peer group review'!

Peace, -Roan

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